Insights

Like most of us, if you have spent this year plowing through your immense to-do list, orchestrating the various demands of life, it’s likely that you have overlooked what could have been a major source of daily happiness.

Your wins and accomplishments … the things that were on (or off) your to-do list, that you have actually managed to get checked off. The daily tasks you achieved throughout the year, are all huge reasons to celebrate. In fact, the smaller the ‘thing’, the more reason to celebrate!

According to research, there is incredible power in small wins. It’s the fulfillment that comes from making progress!

Each day you experience wins, both big and small, but you could be moving too fast (or you are too hard on yourself) to notice.

To always be focused on “what’s next?” can, and will deplete you. Once you make an effort to start noting and celebrating the small things, it can increase your sense of self-worth, and your happiness.

Ask yourself if during the course of 2017, you regularly glossed over some of these things:

1. You ate a healthy breakfast

2. You exercised

3. You spent time playing with a child, with your phone on mute in another room

4. You said NO to something you really didn’t want to do

5. You sat down and read something that made you think

6. You took a short walk and really appreciated your surroundings, without your phone in your pocket

One way to celebrate the small things is to keep track of them, and give yourself some rewards.

Documenting your small wins will give you visible proof of what you’ve accomplished, so that you are more likely to keep at it. It will also help shut down that inner critic who tells you that you are never doing enough.

As 2017 comes to a close, please think about the small things that made you happy this year. Write them down in a fresh journal, with your favourite pen (if you don’t have a favourite pen, buy yourself one … believe me it matters).

Then use that journal as a road map for 2018. Do more of what made you happy, and continue to celebrate the small things. Remember to honour the meaningful things in your life … the smaller the better!

We would love to hear from you! What little victories do you celebrate? Leave us a comment down below.

For brainstorming tips and creative thinking hacks, be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Great networking means creating relationships that will last your entire career. But how do you make it more fun and less WORK?

Here are five tips that will help take the edge off.

Get to know Two to Three people well:

At industry events instead of merely fattening your stack of business cards by talking to everybody. Find shared personal interests to create a stronger bond. It’s not a game of how many people in the room you speak to, it’s about creating meaningful relationships. In this case … less is definitely more!

Fly solo at events:

Chat with people you haven’t met. Make a point of sitting with strangers at meals, always choose the table away from where your friends or co-workers are sitting. Tip: Walk up to someone you know, who’s speaking to people you do not know, and become part of their conversation.

Run a group:

Help run a trade association or networking group. You’ll get to know the stakeholders well, and they’ll introduce you to others.

Speak on a panel:

Work on becoming a thought leader or a subject matter expert. Offer to speak at trade association events (some are “pay to play” but might still be wise investments). Put yourself in front of a crowd, those who connect with your passion, and presentation will seek you out!

Use social media:

If you produce quality content about your expertise via a blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, an e-newsletter or video, the content can serve as an icebreaker with others. Ask questions, start conversations, and take interest in what your peers are posting.

We would love to hear from you! Do you have any go to tips or tricks that help you Network with the best of them? Leave us a comment down below.

For more brainstorming tips and creative thinking hacks, be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

As soon as you start to cut corners during brainstorming to save time, the process falls apart. You’ll soon be back to square one, staring at each other across the boardroom table asking if anyone has an idea!

From time to time I have had clients ask me to do a ‘light’ version of the process. Bottom line, there is no ‘light’ version that works — certainly not one that generates the quantity and quality of ideas that are worthy of people’s time.

I can think of two stories I would love to share with you. Neither of them involves ‘breaking the rules’, but each of them involves stopping a brainstorming session!

I was working with a large group in Texas when in the middle of the session a woman stood up and screamed, “I’ve lost my diamond engagement ring!”

I asked everyone to stay very still while we called the hotel concierge staff and asked them to send as many people as they could.

When the hotel staff arrived, we all got down on our hands and knees and crawled around the room looking for the ring… No luck. It wasn’t there.

I asked the hotel staff to accompany the guest so she could retrace every step she had taken from the time she got up that morning.

The rest of us resumed our brainstorming session.

Within an hour, our guest returned wearing her ring! Apparently it had slipped off her finger during the night, and she found it under the bed in her room.

The second story takes place during a brainstorming session at the conference centre in Whistler. As a team was presenting their big ideas, we lost all the power to the building. Everything went pitch black and it stayed that way for about 10 minutes. We waited for a backup generator to kick in… But it never did.

We stopped our session while many guests turned on the flashlight feature on their phones. They also taught other guests how to use it.

The session was with Miracle Ear. We were working on big ideas focusing on communicating with hearing impaired consumers that were in denial.

The power outage provided us with an unexpected stimulus — if this is how it feels to not be able to see, imagine the ‘dark’ world these people are living in who can’t hear! The session took on a life of its own.

One of my favourite quotes is from Katharine Hepburn: ‘If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun’.

One of the main reasons people say they love to attend conferences is for the ability to network. Yet, when I speak at conferences, I notice that what is happening is exactly the opposite of networking.

People walk around with their herd, their tribe—the people they already know.

When they go into a breakout room, they save seats at their table for their tribe members, and those seats are directly beside each other.

When I speak at a conference, one of the first things I do is to ask people to go and sit beside someone they don’t know and introduce him or herself while exchanging business cards.

Next comes the question, “How do you introduce yourself in a memorable way?”

When someone asks you what you do, it’s just not interesting or engaging to answer him or her as a ‘talking brochure’.

WOW, HOW, NOW: How it can help you network

WOW, HOW, NOW is a favourite technique of mine that works like a charm. Here’s how it works:

WOW: Say something intriguing (even puzzling) that will make the other person want to hear more. A creative summary of what you do that demands some clarification. Ideally, the stranger’s reaction will be to cock their head and ask, “What does that mean?”

HOW: Answer the stated (or unspoken) question and explain exactly what you do.

NOW: Shift into storytelling mode, giving a concrete example. The key phrase is “Now, for example…”

Let’s take a look at WOW, HOW, NOW in action:

Stranger: So, what do you do?

Me: I help create Big Hairy Audacious Ideas!

Stranger: Huh?

Me: I facilitate brainstorming sessions that unlock the creativity in corporate teams. I show people how to work together to create big, hairy, audacious ideas to make their business more profitable.

The next time you have the opportunity to network, try your best to break away from your herd, and try on the WOW, HOW, NOW approach! For more networking and brainstorming for business tips, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I loved the opening exercise for the conference. Everyone was given one 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper and a few paper clips. They asked us to make a paper airplane featuring our name and a saying that was uniquely from our area of the world.

I realized immediately that my paper airplane making skills were lacking, as you can see from the picture below.

After we completed our airplanes, we were asked to throw them to someone. We then found that person, introduced ourselves and explained why we chose that particular saying.

I met a lovely woman from Minnesota that wrote OOFDA on her airplane. I had never heard that expression in my life!

Here’s what it means and where it came from:

Uff da (sometimes also spelled huffda, uff-da, uffda, uff-dah, oofda, ufda, ufdah, oofta, or uf daa) is an exclamation or interjection expressing bafflement, surprise, or dismay. Of Norwegian origin, the phrase was adopted by Scandinavian Americans in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest region of the United States during the 19th century.

There were prizes for the most aerodynamically designed planes. I didn’t win (go figure), but I had a blast meeting a ton of new people!

Humility is a much tougher state of mind, no question… But it also works much harder for you than ego. Check your ego at the door and creativity will flourish!

Timeline

‘To kill your timeline isn’t about throwing out your schedule. Instead, it means adopting a new orientation towards time itself, one that lives beneath the reality that time is limited… So don’t waste it talking about work. Get to work!’

Far too many people talk about what they plan to do, rather than doing it. I think this is another form of an excuse!

Time is precious — don’t waste it! Squeeze every second you can out of every day, particularly when it comes to creative thinking.

Barefoot Bonus: Technology

My Barefoot Bonus addition to Aaron’s article is technology. Please kill all forms of technology when you are thinking creatively.

Science tells us that we need time to daydream since daydreaming boosts our creativity. If we’re filling any possible downtime with our devices, are we inhibiting that daydream time?

Creativity is often referred to as a “use it or lose it” discipline. You might work in a creative job, but you could be strangling your creativity by being fastened to a device.